


Rare and Forgotten

by LaughingStones



Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Gen, Scavenging - it's the Motorcity way!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22915360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingStones/pseuds/LaughingStones
Summary: Dutch and Julie need an edge in their fight against Kane, so they go scavenging down in the Undercity. This time, though, they don't just find car parts and mutant rats.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 101





	Rare and Forgotten

Julie said in the old records she dug up it looked like there should be some interesting stuff down here, rare alloys and forgotten parts, potentially even old weapons, and Dutch follows her lead as usual. With him and Julie forming their own tiny two-person anti-Kane gang, they need any edge they can get, but this far down the Undercity is pretty damn creepy. Sure, there's plenty of glowy blue mushrooms around, so it's not too dark to see even outside the flashlight function of Dutch's omnitool, but there's collapsed buildings everywhere, some of them buried under fallen upper layers of the old streets and city. It leaves Dutch wandering through cavernous tunnels of broken streets and old lots, weaving his way around ruins that stretch all the way up to the ceiling of so-far-intact upper levels, and hoping at every moment the ground under his feet doesn't give way.

Julie either has no fear or she's really good at compartmentalizing, because she ranged out ahead with no hesitation, searching for any usable materials. Dutch thinks she's ahead, anyway. Given how many times the way ahead has been blocked so he has to find a route around, he might be ahead of her by now.

He rounds a tower of rubble and spots an intact chunk of building ahead, a chunk of broken wall framing deep shadows inside.

Right, Dutch had better check that out. However little he wants to venture into that darkness. It's fine, he's got his omnitool; he'll be ready if any mutant rats attack.

He edges carefully into the building, shining the light on his omnitool around. There's rubble everywhere and a fascinating arrangement of pipes and wires leading from a weird structure of metal and shattered glass that Dutch has got to examine more closely. The open area of the room stretches back to the left and around a corner, and Dutch keeps glancing nervously back in that direction as he investigates, which is why he's totally taken by surprise when there's a sudden scraping sound from his right.

"Target acquired," announces a voice as he whips around to point his light in that direction. There's a man standing there in the back corner, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested and a full head shorter than Dutch, little red and green lights glinting from--

From the side of his _neck_ , Dutch thought he must be wearing some kind of necklace or something but he's not, the lights are _in him_. His skin is too shiny and smooth, too, and when he crouches, ready to attack, the movement is wrong, too rapid and ending too abruptly, holding too still.

"Prepare to get your zombie butt kicked!" the guy says.

"What?" Dutch yelps, skittering backwards. "No! What do you mean, _zombie?!_ "

The guy pauses. "New information acquired. Zombies talk now."

"I'm not a zombie!" Dutch says. "What the hell, who are you?"

"Battle-bot Texas protects Detroit's citizens and smashes the heck outta the zombie menace!" the bot says, flexing both arms, and goes on, "Reevaluating target parameters. Target matches no known zombie profile. Reassigning status from target to civilian."

"Good! Geez," Dutch says, cautiously starting to relax. Now that he's not panicking, he can see the bot is a skillfully made android, with black hair that falls around an almost humanly mobile face that if he didn't know better he'd say looks distinctly sulky right now. The bot's voice is close to right, too, the cadence just a little too even to sound natural.

"How long have you been here?" he asks.

"Verifying chronometer. One hundred eighty-four years in stasis," the bot answers.

"Whoa," Dutch says, and has to sit down on the floor. The idea of an ancient fighter android just waiting in stasis in a ruin under Motorcity is incredible enough. The idea that said android was made to fight _zombies?_ …Dutch isn't sure he can believe that, actually. He knows Motorcity's history is splintered and half-forgotten, but surely people would know if zombies had ever been a real thing? More likely someone reprogrammed this bot before he got abandoned or whatever, trying to turn him into a real life video game accessory or something.

"Alert! Civilian down!" the bot says, and comes forward at a quick, lurching gait like something's wrong with one leg. "Medic! Assistance required!"

"I'm fine!" Dutch says, because the bot's faintly-gleaming eyes are wide and alarmed as he hovers above Dutch. "Just, you know, kind of startled. Gotta catch my breath a minute."

"Medic!" the bot says again, ignoring this. "The civilian's having a heart attack or something!" Paying no attention to Dutch's protest at that, he goes lurching over to the big structure Dutch barely started examining before getting interrupted. He presses some things on one side and goes completely still for a moment, waiting. When nothing happens, he cocks his head to one side, makes a weirdly normal annoyed sound, reaches out and just _rips the side_ _off_ the big metal cube part.

Dutch flinches back, but the bot just bends forward to peer into the structure.

"Chuck, c'mon!" the bot says. "Stop bein' broken already, it's been like two hundred years! Aaah, shoot. Wimpy piece of junk."

"Wait, what?" Dutch says. "Who's Chuck?"

"The medic," the bot says. "Strategy bot, jumpy weirdo." He's jittering now, movements all stop-start like he's glitching, and Dutch almost thinks he looks upset. Which makes sense if--

"There's _two_ of you?" Dutch demands.

"He's not a battle bot like Unit Texas!" the bot says with an offended look, puffing up. "He's Strategy and Tactics, and his alerts go off all the time cuz he's dumb." Texas looks back at the structure. "The Commander's still broken, too. They're supposed to be fixed by now, the machine's supposed to _fix_ us." He frowns at the broken glass and twisted metal like it being shattered is no excuse.

"Three," Dutch corrects himself faintly. "Three of you."

"Civilians have technical specialties sometimes," Texas says, staring at Dutch. "Are you a technician? Can you fix it, fix them?"

"Gimme a minute and I can try," Dutch assures him, and raises a screen. "Julie? You're not gonna believe this, but you gotta get over here now."

-

"Holy crap," Julie says when she sees Texas.

"I know, right?" Dutch says.

"Second individual identified," Texas says. "Civilian, definitely not a zombie."

"Thanks," Julie says. "I don't think you're a zombie either."

"Okay," says Dutch, "let's see what we can do for your buddies."

-

It turns out that for a guy as good with his hands as Dutch, fixing the other bots is doable with some time and effort. He'd like his toolbox, but his omnitool is good enough, and all the parts needed for the repairs can be stripped out of the broken machine. He starts on the slim blond bot, and it takes a few hours, Julie standing at his elbow mapping out the bot's schematics so Dutch can see what he's doing. Texas is limping around the whole time like he's anxious or restless, if a bot can get restless.

Man, Dutch can't wait to introduce ROTH to these guys once they're all online.

Finally Dutch snaps the last plate back down on the shoulder of the bot Texas called Chuck, and the bot's head moves, eyes widening as they focus on Dutch.

"Alert!" he says in a high-pitched voice, sitting up all at once. "Danger! Intruders! Assistance requested!"

"Whoa, hey, you're okay!" Dutch says. "We're not zombies or anything, promise."

The guy pauses. "Alert?" he says.

"We're helping," Julie puts in. "Dutch just fixed you, and he's going to fix your friend--"

"Commander?" the blond bot says, and glances around, spotting the other deactivated bot beside him and going very still. He looks from Julie to Dutch, and either his face and voice is more expressive than Texas's or Dutch is getting better at reading the bots, because the guy looks worried as hell. "May I fix him, please?"

"Uh!" says Dutch, who was about to assure him his buddy would be fine when Dutch was done with him. "You can do that? Oh, because you're a medic, you do repair stuff, huh?"

"I'm not a medic," the bot says, sounding annoyed. "My system has adaptive learning processes, I figured stuff out."

"Yeah, you do fixing, so you're the medic," Texas puts in.

The blond bot gives him a look a lot like a glare and then busily ignores him, turning to kneel over the commander bot, who looks about as tall as him and only a bit less broad than Texas.

Dutch hands over his omnitool with only a faint pang, and watches everything intently, but those pale, narrow hands move so fast it's hard to track what he's doing. The repairs are done in a quarter of the time it took Dutch to fix the blond bot, and the Commander was in worse shape to start.

The Commander jerks faintly when the last repair is done, and then his open eyes shift and focus on the blond bot's face. "Chuck," he says in relief, and one hand comes up and meets the blond's, fingertips touching. Dutch blinks at the flickering glow that springs up where they touch, a pale blue glitter like a hologram glitching out.

"Comm units resynched," says Chuck, and ducks his head--shyly, if that's possible--when the Commander smiles at him. For a moment they're completely focused on each other, still and quiet, and Dutch feels like he's intruding.

"Hey!" Texas says from behind Dutch, who jumps. "Commander, they're totally not zombies! Texas got you all fixed up so we can go find where the zombies are at!"

Chuck shoots Texas another annoyed look that doesn't seem to register, then crosses his arms. All the lights on his neck blink in a quick rhythm, then go back to their steady glow.

The Commander rolls to his feet with that too-fast smoothness, startling Dutch so he falls backwards out of his crouch. Julie stands up, one hand drifting towards the pocket in her vest where she keeps her boomerang.

Instead of attacking, the Commander just smiles from one to the other of them, and Dutch is stunned by how warm and human the expression looks, despite the polymer-smooth skin and the glinting lights on the neck. "Hey," he says. "Thanks for helping us out. We're here to ensure your safety."

That puts a creepy shiver down Dutch's spine, it sounds so much like something Deluxe Security would say. Unlike one of the Elites, though, this bot sounds completely sincere.

"What do you do if there aren't any zombies to fight?" Julie asks.

The Commander smiles wryly. "It's not like they're just going to disappear. We go into standby after repairs if the break between waves is a week or more." He looks up at Texas. "Come get fixed, buddy."

Texas lurches over, muttering, "Texas is doin' fine, Texas doesn't need repairs."

Julie and Dutch look at each other as Texas drops to the floor and Chuck starts working on his leg. Dutch will admit it's a little much to assume that some game fanatic reprogrammed _three_ androids as game accessories, but… real life zombies? Really?

"Okay," Dutch says carefully to the Commander, "but if, say, there was a really long break between, uh, waves, but something else was a threat in the meantime. Would you guys be up to protect people by fighting another threat?"

"Of course!" the Commander says. "Fighting is what we're for." Then he goes still, the lights on his neck blinking rapidly. He frowns, glances around the dark, half-ruined room, and strides out the broken place in the wall. Julie takes a couple steps after him, but he comes right back in before she can follow.

"Observation," he says, looking between her and Dutch. "Everything has changed. No zombies or signs of human life in evidence--but you're here."

"Yeah," Julie says. "Motorcity is built on itself--the people are living up there, now, a few levels above this. And Deluxe Detroit is built over that."

"And there's no zombies around," Dutch picks up, "but Kane keeps sending death bots down from Deluxe to try to get rid of everyone in Motorcity."

"No zombies," the Commander says, and the lights on his neck blink off, blink on again. "For how long?"

"I've never even heard of them bein' a thing," Dutch says.

Julie nods. "I thought they were just from vids and games."

"Speculation," Chuck says, sitting back as Texas stands up and starts doing disturbingly fast and powerful-looking kicks to test out his leg. "If a solution was found for the zombie problem, and another disaster occurred shortly after it was implemented, the zombie wars might have been almost completely forgotten."

…That does kind of make sense. It's also terrifying, and Dutch decided he's never studying history, ever.

The Commander nods slowly, which has got to be a gesture he learned from humans--all three of them must have the adaptive learning abilities Chuck mentioned, they're just too expressive. That shouldn't be a shock, given that ROTH is highly opinionated and expressive for a boxy little bot with organic plant-arms, it's just that it looks really different in androids with near-human faces.

"Who's in charge?" the Commander says. Dutch blinks, thinking about all the different gangs, and the Duke would probably say he's in charge of Motorcity but he's definitely not--

"I am," Julie says firmly.

The Commander nods to her. "Voice print and biosignature registered. You have a hologram up. Is this standard?"

"For me, yes," Julie says.

"Wait, are you serious?" Dutch asks the bot. "That's all it takes, is someone saying they're in charge and you believe it?"

The Commander hesitates before answering, and his little lights do some wild blinking. "Almost two centuries have passed," he says. "The last person authorized to give us orders is long dead. Our purpose is to fight and protect." He pauses again, and Chuck gets up, moves over to stand beside him. Texas stops doing kicks and comes to stand at his other side.

"You say there are death bots," the Commander goes on. "We can fight those, help people, if you can tell us how."

"We can, yeah," Julie says. "Right now, we're the only ones fighting them, and we could use a little help."

The Commander nods. "If that's true, you're the right ones to take orders from." He tilts his head at Texas. "Texas does heavy assault and distraction techniques," he tells Julie, and then smiles at Chuck. "This is Chuck, tactics and strategy, though his navigation modules will need an update. I'm Mike. I coordinate and kick butt."

He grins, and Dutch doesn't _reel_ with it, he just. It's just startling, that's all. He's _positive_ a bot shouldn't be capable of that much charm.

"I'm Julie and that's Dutch," Julie says, not sounding breathless at all, dang it. "We're the Burners. Welcome to the team."


End file.
